Monday, July 25, 2016

I'm thrilled to have the Amanda Lester and the Pink Sugar Conspiracy, by Paula Berinstein, Blog Tour stopping by today! This blog tour is organized by Lola's Blog Tours. The blog tour runs from 18 till 31 July, you can view the complete tour schedule here.

Amanda Lester wouldn’t be caught dead going into the family business. Her ancestor, Sherlock Holmes’s colleague Inspector G. Lestrade, is a twit. Nevertheless her parents refuse to see his flaws, and she’s going to a secret English school for the descendants of famous detectives whether she likes it or not.When Amanda arrives at the dreaded school, she considers running away—until she and her new friends discover blood and weird pink substances in odd places. At first they’re not sure whether these oddities mean anything, but when Amanda’s father disappears and the cook is found dead with her head in a bag of sugar, they’re certain that crimes are taking place.Now Amanda must embrace her destiny and uncover the truth. The only snag is that arch-villain Blixus Moriarty, a descendant of Holmes’s nemesis Professor James Moriarty, might be involved, and he doesn’t like nosy little girls interfering in his business.

Get the box set with the first four books in this series!Amanda Lester box set (Amanda Lester, Detective #1-4)by Paula Berinstein Genre: Mystery/ Detective/ FantasyAge category: Middle Grade/ Young AdultRelease Date: July 4, 2016

"Sherlock Holmes meets Nancy Drew meets Harry Potter."This set includes all four Amanda Lester, Detective books from the first year at the Legatum Continuatum Enduring School for Detectives.Book 1, Amanda Lester and the Pink Sugar ConspiracyBook 2, Amanda Lester and the Orange Crystal CrisisBook 3, Amanda Lester and the Purple Rainbow PuzzleBook 4, Amanda Lester and the Blue Peacocks' SecretAmanda Lester wouldn’t be caught dead going into the family business. Her ancestor, Sherlock Holmes’s colleague Inspector G. Lestrade, is a twit. Nevertheless her parents refuse to see his flaws, and she’s going to a secret English school for the descendants of famous detectives whether she likes it or not.When Amanda arrives at the dreaded school, she considers running away—until she and her new friends discover blood and weird pink substances in odd places. At first they’re not sure whether these oddities mean anything, but when Amanda’s father disappears and the cook is found dead with her head in a bag of sugar, they’re certain that crimes are taking place.Now Amanda must embrace her destiny and uncover the truth. The only snag is that arch-villain Blixus Moriarty, a descendant of Holmes’s nemesis Professor James Moriarty, might be involved, and he doesn’t like nosy little girls interfering in his business.Follow the exciting adventures of the girl who learned that sometimes you need to be part of something larger than yourself.

Amanda Lester and the Pink Sugar Conspiracy American English vs British English excerpt

When they’d gone, Amanda said, “Let’s go to the kitchen and see if we can sneak something delicious. I’m having sugar withdrawal.”

“Me too,” said Amphora. “You’re on.”

You weren’t supposed to go into the kitchen without a good reason. It was a school rule and the cook was very strict about it. But both girls were craving sugar so badly that they didn’t care, so they snuck off to see if there were any easy pickings.

They didn’t have much time. They’d have to be in class in a few minutes. As they approached they saw the cook in the hall talking to her assistant, a petite, dark-haired woman who obviously wasn’t happy about something. Good. The cook wasn’t paying attention to the other people around her. This would be easy. They opened the door quietly and tiptoed in.

The woman certainly was fastidious. The huge kitchen gleamed like the Taj Mahal on a sunny day. Gigantic iron pots were sitting on the stove, steaming, boiling, and sizzling away, and fresh, colorful vegetables that bore faint resemblance to the peas at lunch were laid out on the massive wooden cutting board in the center of the room. At the far end was a refrigerator the size of a semi-trailer.

“There,” said Amphora, pointing. “Let’s try the fridge.”

“You got it,” said Amanda, tippy-toeing toward the behemoth. “Hey, wait a minute. There’s the pantry. Maybe there are some cookies in there.”

“Cookies?” said Amphora. “Oh, biscuits. Right.”

“Biscuits?” I don’t want a biscuit. I want something sweet,” said Amanda.

“Biscuits are sweet,” hissed Amphora.

“No they’re not,” said Amanda. “I want cookies.”

Continuing to argue, the two girls entered the gigantic pantry, which was lined with shelves and cubbies of assorted shapes and sizes. It felt very homey, and Amanda thought that if she were stuck there for a week she wouldn’t mind at all.

“There!” they both said at once, running toward a shelf full of cookies of every variety—chocolate, vanilla, coconut, raisin, jam-in-the-center, marshmallow, sprinkle-topped—smashing into each other in the process.

“I thought you said you wanted biscuits,” said Amanda.

“These are biscuits,” said Amphora, grabbing a box.

“No, they’re cookies,” said Amanda, attempting to wrest it away from her.

“Uh uh,” said Amphora, grabbing back. “Biscuits.”

“Wait a minute,” said Amanda, letting her have the box. “You think these are biscuits?”

“They are biscuits.”

“Oooooh, I get it. That’s what you guys call cookies. To us, biscuits are dinner rolls. Or breakfast rolls.”

Basic mystery ingredients

A crime or mysterious happening: the flour.

Most mysteries for adults involve a murder or five. But is that appropriate for kids? Well, maybe. Murders raise the stakes and make solving the crime more urgent. But murders involve violence and weapons, and that’s a tricky area in kids’ books. It’s scary and can be needlessly upsetting.

My solution is to use cartoonish violence and weapons. In the first two Amanda Lester, Detective books, the weapons are pink sugar and orange energy crystals. In the third, there’s cell phone zapping. None of these weapons really exists, and let’s face it: if they did they wouldn’t seem all that threatening.

The other thing I do is create oddball crimes and happenings that feel cartoonish. They might be a bit scary, but I try to make them kid scary, i.e., non-threatening in real life, not serial killer scary. A man is kidnapped when he slips on a banana peel. A mysterious book disappears from the library. Purple rainbows fill the sky.

A detective: the sugar.

How does a pint-sized detective solve a case? They can’t get around on their own power to visit crime scenes and interview witnesses, they don’t have access to police tools, they have no credentials that give them authority.

My solution is to give the kids a detective school that offers the resources they need. I locate many of the crimes and mysteries on campus or within easy reach of the school and provide older characters who can drive my detectives around. The fact that the UK, where my stories are set, has excellent trains doesn’t hurt either. And of course there are skateboards.

Villains: the baking powder.

Villains are the best part of a detective story and I believe in having lots of them. Of course there must be an overreaching villain who looms over the entire series, one who is larger than life. Mine is a descendant of one of the most notorious villains in literature, Professor James Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes stories. But one villain alone can’t plague the hero nearly enough, so I invent major and minor villains who fight each other as well as the detectives, introducing or focusing on a new one with each book in the series.

Victims: the salt.

I have to admit that I kill off a lot of characters. In my defense, most of them are either bad guys or faceless people we never meet. While bad things do happen to my good characters, including death by accident and natural causes, I have yet to murder any of them. I’m not sure if this is because I‘m looking out for my readers’ interests or my own. I’m happy to torment my good characters, but not like that. Perhaps it’s the kid in me that won’t let me go too far. Or is it the adult?

Clues/an investigation: the eggs.

Of course there can be no investigation without clues, so a mystery writer must leave signs for the detective to follow. Often these take the form of physical evidence like fingerprints, blood, discarded weapons, and the like. But not all my investigations have to do with crimes. My books involve mysterious happenings too. So my clues include things like strange peacock behavior, odd-looking crystals in the mud, overheard snippets of conversation. It’s these clues that alert Amanda and her friends to the fact that something weird is happening and lead them on some of the most interesting investigations they’ll ever make.

A Solution: the heat.

I am as interested in process as I am in results, so my readers can watch a solution taking shape. Amanda is always making lists, reasoning out what could be happening, and formulating and testing hypotheses. Sometimes she makes mistakes and goes down the wrong path. I do this partly to show kids how to approach a problem, but also because I can’t stand detectives who are infallible. I want kids to know that it’s okay—no, essential—to make mistakes because that’s how we learn.

Those are the main elements. But I also add special ingredients to give my stories just the right flavor.

Customize your mystery cupcake with these special ingredients

A maguffin: pink frosting

A maguffin is the object the characters are searching for or trying to understand, but it’s really an excuse to send them on a quest and tell a story. The speckled band in a Sherlock Holmes story, a mysterious book in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, a ring in The Lord of the Rings—these are maguffins. If Amanda hadn’t found pink sugar scattered around the school she wouldn’t have started looking at the cook suspiciously. If Amphora Kapoor hadn’t found an orange crystal in the mud, there might not have been a battle at the Windermere quarry.

Gadgets: silver sprinkles

Detective stories set in the present tend to be technology intensive, but I like to have fun and take mine way beyond the usual DNA sequencing and fiber analysis. So I’ve got a microscope made out of a cell phone, an acoustic levitator that lifts things without touching them, a machine that sees into the past, and more. Who knows? Maybe someday my inventions will become real.

Sensory imagery: sparkling sugar

Kids love fun sights, sounds, and textures, so I’ve tried to make my stories as colorful, sound-, smell-, and touch-rich as possible. That’s one reason I’ve used color in every title. I also use words like clack and clunk and make Simon Binkle’s breath smell like peppermint.

Humor: rainbow sprinkles

It’s a known fact that kids love stories with humor in them, so I poke fun at my characters, especially Amanda, who is known for her rather sensitive stomach, but also messy eater Simon Binkle, voodoo-practicing Editta Sweetgum, and the headmaster, Gaston Thrillkill, who carries around a hair dryer so he can melt icicles.

Twists: fudge icing

What kid doesn’t love a surprise? I always include a surprise ending in my stories. I also like to thwart expectations, so I plant red herrings and mislead readers.

Cool settings: fancy wrappers

The UK has it all: atmosphere, history, big cities, villages, nature, even magic. The secret school for detectives is an old manor house that’s been added onto so much that each part of it is different. But more than that, whimsy is built into the school in the form of changing décor that allows the kids to practice their observational skills. One day the Holmes House common room looks like a coffee shop. The next it’s a jungle.

Multiple mysteries: marble batter

Because a series gives you the opportunity to create short and long character and plot arcs, I have multiple mysteries going in each book, usually a short-term one that's specific to the book and a long-term one that keeps going.

A world kids relate to: chocolate center

Middle grade readers’ lives revolve around their classes, teachers, and friends, with some family thrown in, so I offer them twists on these familiar elements of life—ones I hope they’ll gossip about as much as they do their own lives.

So, how do you like my chocolate-centered, pink and fudge iced, marbled, sparkling rainbow and silver topped, fancy-wrapped cupcake?

About the Author:
Paula Berinstein is nothing like Amanda. For one thing, she’s crazy about Sherlock Holmes. For another, she’s never wanted to be a filmmaker. In addition, compared to Amanda she’s a big chicken! And she wouldn’t mind going to a secret school at all. In fact, she’s hoping that some day she’ll get to build one.

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Welcome to my little square on the disco dance floor of life! It's good to have you here. Come in and dance a little boogie, shake your little booty, and get ready to talk books! My name is Aeicha and I'm a proud Supernatural and Harry Potter fangirl, and my literary soulmate is Lauren Myracle. Please email, tweet, or Facebook me (visit my Contact Me page to learn how) with any questions, thoughts, concerns, rambles, delicious cupcake, recipes.If you have a book you'd like me to review please visit my Review Policy page to learn more. I'm always interested in participating in blog tours, hosting giveaways, or conducting author and/or character interviews.

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Five Cupcakes:

I absolutely loved this book! It's the bee's knees, the cat's meow, the squirrel's nuts. It's the double chocolate, frosting smothered, sprinkle covered homemade cupcake on top of the cupcake tower that you crave. You MUST read this book.

Four Cupcakes:

This book is awesome! It's the pretty store bought cupcake that's almost as good as your mom's. You really should read this book.

Three Cupcakes:

This book is very good! It's the cupcake you don't mind eating, but it isn't your favorite. Read it if you have the chance.

Two Cupcakes:

This book failed to impress me. If I were on a plane and had to choose between reading this book and listening to the person next to me talk about their spoon collection, I'd go with the spoons. This is more of a bran muffin than a cupcake. Read it if you want.

One Cupcake:

No amount of frosting or sprinkles could save this cupcake. I don't recommend reading this book.